Last week, the Senate passed SB 3310, a bill to update the state’s abstinence-based sex education curriculum to define holding hands and kissing as “gateway sexual activities.” Just one senator voted against the legislation; 28 voted in favor.

Since the bill specifically bans teachers from “demonstrating gateway sexual activity”, educators would be prohibited from even demonstrating what hand-holding is. Breaking these laws could result in a lawsuit, as Hunter from Daily Kos notes:

If your teacher teaches you anything about sex that isn’t specifically on the approved curriculum, like demonstrating “holding hands” for the class instead of quietly tsking about the dangers it poses, they can be sued.

Still, this anti-hand-holding push may only be the second-worst bill passed in Tennessee this month. Nearly a century after the Volunteer State played host to the Scopes Monkey Trial, the legislature has now enacted a new law allowing educators to teach creationism alongside evolution.

Tennessee News

The United Auto Workers are trying to organize a Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee, but GOP lawmakers seem determined to thwart them. About 1,550 hourly workers are employed at the plant, which opened its doors in 2011. On Wednesday, workers began a three-day vote on whether to join the union. A yes vote would be a major triumph for the UAW, which has tried for years to represent auto workers in the South, a region where anti-union sentiment is strong.
Usually, it’s the company management you have to worry about when...

Environmental groups in Tennessee concerned about coal pollution are reporting a significant victory with National Coal’s decision to effectively leave the surface mining business in Appalachia.
An agreement reached in late June with Statewide Organizing for Community eMpowerment (SOCM), Tennessee Clean Water Network and the Sierra Club involves three sites owned by the company: Zeb Mountain Mine, the state’s largest surface coal mine and known as Mine 7, Mine 14 and the Jordan Ridge Refuse Disposal Area.
The environmental groups claim in lawsuits that National Coal had violated the Clean Water Act...

Tennessee lawmakers have elevated hatred for government and disgust for poor people to an art form.
If you're worried about where America is heading, look no further than Tennessee. Its lush mountains and verdant rolling countryside belie a mean-spirited public policy that only makes sense if you believe deeply in the anti-collectivist, anti-altruist philosophy of Ayn Rand. It's what you get when you combine hatred for government with disgust for poor people.
Tennessee starves what little government it has, ranking dead last in per capita tax revenue. To fund its minimalist public sector, it...

A four-year-old boy accidentally shot and killed the wife of a deputy sheriff in Tennessee.
Here’s a perfect example of the dark side of America’s gun culture: a four-year-old boy accidentally shot and killed the wife of a deputy sheriff in Tennessee. The Associated Press reports that the boy grabbed a loaded gun and killed the wife at a cookout on Saturday.
Daniel Fanning, the deputy, was showing his weapons to a relative in his room. That’s when the toddler, not related to Fanning, picked the gun up and accidentally shot Josephine...

As Tennessee prepares to consider two bills to reduce welfare assistance for needy families whose children are not doing well in school, a Change.org petition has popped up to fight the measure. The petition was started by Clergy for Justice, a Tennesse-based organization of clergy that has previously advocated for causes including immigration reform, health care, and anti-bullying laws. Within 36 hours, their petition garnered over 2,000 supporters from at least 145 cities and towns in Tennessee.
HB 0261 and SB 0132 would make family benefits from the Temporary Assistance for...

Two Tennessee lawmakers introduced legislation that would tie welfare assistance under the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program to the educational performance of students who benefit from it, and the legislation was approved by committees in both the state House and Senate last week.
Under the legislation brought by two Republicans, a student who doesn’t not make “satisfactory progress” in school would cost his or her family up to 30 percent of its welfare assistance, the Knoxville News and Sentinel reported:
The bill is sponsored by Sen. Stacey Campfield, R-Knoxville, and Rep....

NASHVILLE — Two nights a year, Tennessee holds a health care lottery of sorts, giving the medically desperate a chance to get help.
State residents who have high medical bills but would not normally qualify for Medicaid, the government health care program for the poor, can call a state phone line and request an application. But the window is tight — the line shuts down after 2,500 calls, typically within an hour — and the demand is so high that it is difficult to get through.
(Photo: John Orzechowski, a...

Low-income Americans are resorting to desperate measures to access the care they need. Time to expand Medicaid.
Twice a year, Tennessee holds a “ health care lottery” that gives some hope to the uninsured residents in the state who can’t afford health coverage. Tennesseans who meet certain requirements — in addition to falling below a certain income threshold, they must be elderly, blind, disabled, or a caretaker of a child who qualifies for Medicaid — may call to request an application for the state’s public health insurance program, known as TennCare.
The...

In 2011, as part of a nationwide push for new restrictions on voting, Tennessee enacted one of the most stringent voter photo ID requirements in the country.
In response to criticism that it would disenfranchise voters, state lawmakers agreed to issue free photo ID cards to make sure eligible voters aren't wrongfully denied the vote. But a Facing South analysis shows that, less than four months from Election Day, Tennessee's photo ID program is reaching only a fraction of those who likely need it.
The Tennessee law, which...

Republican Tennessee Governor Bill Haslem has signed the ‘Gateway Sexual Activity’ bill into law. Earlier this year, the Tennessee Republican controlled legislature overwhelmingly passed the bill, passing the House 68-23 and the Senate 28-1. The governor signed the bill before the Mother’s Day weekend.
The law is so vague that it could define kissing and holding hands as ‘gateways to sexual activity’ and make it difficult for sex education teachers to address such activity in class. The law also may prevent sex education teachers from discussing...

Like any state legislature dealing with 8 percent unemployment and thousands of its residents facing disenfranchisement, the Tennessee Senate is targeting the menace of underage hand-holding.
Last week, the Senate passed SB 3310, a bill to update the state’s abstinence-based sex education curriculum to define holding hands and kissing as “gateway sexual activities.” Just one senator voted against the legislation; 28 voted in favor.
Since the bill specifically bans teachers from “demonstrating gateway sexual activity”, educators would be prohibited from even demonstrating what hand-holding is. Breaking these laws...

'They're trying to keep us from voting...Somebody's gotta make a stand...I took an oath to defend all American rights.'PLUS: Tim Thompson testifies in TN Legislative Subcommitee as repeal of Photo ID law approved...
"I'm shaken up. I mean, I've never done anything like this before," 55-year old former U.S. Marine Tim Thompson said after being turned away from the polling place for refusing to show a Photo ID when attempting to vote on Super Tuesday under a new Tennessee restriction on voting rights passed by Republican lawmakers.
Last...

On Monday, the Tennessee state legislature passed legislation that requires public schools to teach the “controversy” over evolution, global warming, and human cloning:
The Senate voted 24-8 for HB368, which sponsor Sen. Bo Watson, R-Hixson, says will provide guidelines for teachers answering students’ questions about evolution, global warming and other scientific subjects.Critics call it a “monkey bill” that promotes creationism in classrooms.
In 1925, Tennessee was the home of the Scopes monkey trial, where local jurors upheld the conviction of a biology teacher for teaching evolution in his classroom, tarring the reputation of...

Tennessee state Rep. David Hawk (R-Greenville), who supported a bill to allow guns in bars, was arrested on Sunday and charged with domestic assault on his wife.
The lawmaker was released from Greene County jail Monday morning on $500 bond after pleading “not guilty.”
“I am innocent and did not do what was alleged against me,” he told reporters. “I did not harm my wife. … I have faith that the courts will see the truth.”
A criminal complaint obtained by The Greenville Sun stated that Hawk’s wife, Crystal, said the couple had been drinking on...

Former U.S. Rep. Lincoln Davis said he and his wife Lynda were denied the right to vote Tuesday in his Fentress County hometown.
“We walked in and they told me I was not a registered voter. I had been taken off the list,” said Davis, who served two terms representing the fourth congressional district of Tennessee, leaving office in 2011.
“These are people who I grew up with. I told them I live here. I went to school about 20 yards away.”
Davis has been voting in Pall Mall, Tenn.,...

A 93-year-old Tennessee woman who cleaned the state Capitol for 30 years, including the governor’s office, says she won’t be able to vote for the first time in decades after being told this week that her old state ID failed to meet new voter ID regulations.
Thelma Mitchell was even accused of being an undocumented immigrant because she couldn’t produce a birth certificate:
Mitchell, who was delivered by a midwife in Alabama in 1918, has never had a birth certificate. But when she told that to a drivers’ license clerk,...

With a breezy Sunday afternoon as a backdrop, James, a 46-year-old newly homeless African American, finds an audience willing to listen, and eager to learn.
Seated in a circle in Civic Center Plaza, across from Memphis City Hall, is a coalition of folks traveling different walks of life – college students, business owners, activists, workers on their day off, and curious passersby. They are gathered at the Occupy Memphis encampment to engage in three-hours of community building.
James is not the only person without a...

Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam signed off on the plan to arrest the Occupy Nashville protesters, said Bill Gibbons, Commissioner for the Tennessee Department of Safety and Homeland Security at a 10:30 a.m. press conference with reporters.
He said the state stands by its action and insists it didn’t overreact.
“They were very aware that they were trespassing,’’ Gibbons said of the protesters.
The Occupy Nashville protesters who were arrested at 3:10 a.m. today at Legislative Plaza, for violating a state-imposed curfew, were held by the Tennessee...

Dorothy Cooper is a 96-year-old black woman who lives in Chattanooga,Tennessee. She was recently denied a voter identification card because she didn’t have her marriage certificate available — the same card that’s required by the state to vote. This coming election may be the first one she misses in 50 years.
In February, all 20 Republicans and one Democrat in the state senate passed a measure requiring Tennessee voters show a driver’s licenses or other government-issued photo identification before casting a ballot. Democrats countered that the bill’s...